We're entering into a big phase of the year for Netflix, when the giant streaming platform gets all of its most ambitious movies for the year out in cinemas, often very briefly, to ensure that they're eligible for awards contention. It's a process that has worked in the past for the likes of All Quiet on the Western Front and more, and this year the streamer has a good list ready to go.
In the coming weeks there'll be the chance to see Frankenstein, Ballad of a Small Player and Jay Kelly on the big screen, but I jumped when I saw that the first movie to hit cinemas from its lineup was A House of Dynamite. Kathryn Bigelow hasn't made a movie in a good few years, and the teasers for this one made it look superb, as did the first reviews, so I headed to Picturehouse Central in London this past week to check it out for myself.
The economics don't really make sense here, to be clear, and Netflix knows that. It cost about £30 (as a Picturehouse member) to get two tickets for the movie, and that would get me about a month and a half of Netflix's most premium subscription tier, where I could watch the movie on 24 October with the rest of the world in 4K with HDR and surround sound at home.
Sue me, though, because I'm a fan of seeing big movies in the best way possible, and I think A House of Dynamite more than justified the decision. While much of the movie takes place in situation rooms of varying sizes and shapes, and it's not the most visually spectacular film you could choose, its sheer tension and ratcheting unease were amped up by the cinema experience, for sure.
This is also a film with as deep a cast list as you could care to name – you know they've managed to grab a lot of stars when you're in the very final stretches of a blockbuster and someone like The Last of Us's Kaitlyn Dever pops up in a genuinely microscopic role for a few seconds. It's basically a flex, at that point.
I don't want to spoil the plot, although one of the film's strengths is that it doesn't really have any major twists or silliness like that. A missile's incoming toward the US, and this is what might happen, nuff said. If you're a Netflix subscriber, add this to your mental pile of "absolute must watch" stuff, and don't be surprised when it grabs a few nominations in the months to come.
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